Monday, June 6, 2011

Gonna have to rethink that equity traders have less fun than futures traders *updated*



The guys at the Toronto Stock Exchange were able to bring a dancer directly on the trading floor to strip down to her underwear to honor a member which is something I've never seen or heard of happening around any futures trading pits.  However, it wasn't uncommon to see a stripper walk into the elevators at the CME w/a boom box in her hand to head up to someone's office.

The above picture was pulled from:
http://tsetradersarchive.blogspot.com/which is a similar blog to this one which recounts the history of the trading floor but is limited to the Toronto Stock Exchange.

*update*
Reader KC wrote in and made the following comment which deserves a bump up to the main page:

"Okay, it's a story about a guy and he wasn't really a stripper but Chris Farley once did a stripper skit with Patrick Swayze on SNL, so he can count. Farley worked as a runner for Merchants Grain in the CBOT's Mansfield Room while he was performing at Second City. As can be expected, he was a pretty good guy but Main Stage ends at about 1:00 am and the actors usually go out afterwards, so once he got to Main Stage he had problems getting to work on time, even at 8:45. At some point his late arrivals became too much, even for his rather easy-going boss (who was also a bartender at Alcock's) and Farley got canned. Merchants was located where Prudential is now located, the first desks on the west wall as you walk onto the floor above the corn options pit, so when he got fired he went up to the 5th floor Gallery above his desk (next to the west wall clock), and seconds before the 9:30 open he took off his shirt, pressed his rather large belly up against the glass and proceeded to do a belly dance while flailing his arms, it looked so funny that the corn pit was in hysterics and the display even slowed the open in corn by several seconds. And that's the last time I saw Chris Farley in person.

I also recall a stripper showing up in the viewing gallery above the floor of the Mid-Am back in the '80s when it was in the old CME building on Jackson at the river. It was somebody's birthday and she never got past her underwear before the guards got up there and stopped the show. KC"

In an update to the Farley story, JJ wrote in a comment which deserves to be bumped up to the main page:

"Farley worked for Garnac Grain not Merchants.I used to eat lunch with him every day.Our boss Roland Hirsbrunner did not work for Alcocks either,nor did anyone else in that small grain company which was a division of Tenco.He used to steal his lunch by walking out the back way on occasion down at the Ceres Cafe which was in the basement of the C.B.O T.Don't know if the story is true or not about his belly against the glass but he did moon the corn pit once or twice standing on the pits top step"